Common Product Platform Research Articles

Modular product platforming with supply chain postponement decisions by leader-follower interactive optimization

Modular product platforming empowers product family design by identifying the common product platform and configuration of product variants for mass customization. The prevailing practice of fulfilling product families is to postpone certain customization modules in the downstream supply chain. Product platforming and postponement decisions are inherently coupled in terms of developing a modular product architecture to leverage product variety and the supply chain. This paper is motivated towards integrated decision making underlying modular product platforming (MPP) with supply chain postponement (SCP). The paper formulates integrated MPP and SCP decisions as a Stackelberg game that entails joint optimization for interactive evaluation of product modularity and supply chain fulfillment costs. A bilevel mixed 0–1 programming model is developed to characterize the leader-follower decision making process. Virtual compound modules are introduced to justifying which modules should be postponed. An upper level optimization problem is established for identification of basic modules and compound modules by maximizing customer-perceived utilities and postponement utilities of product families, whereas a lower level optimization problem deals with the selection of most appropriate postponement service providers for a minimal total supply chain cost. A nested genetic algorithm is developed to solve the bilevel joint optimization model. A case study of laser printer product platforming and supply chain postponement is reported to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed decision model.

Developing a set of sustainability indicators for product families based on the circular economy model

Abstract Currently, design for sustainability is a necessary issue in any product development process. This situation is due to the existing and increasing pressure under industrial activities that follow a linear economy model based on design, manufacture, use and final disposal. As a feasible solution, Circular Economy (CE) model is considered a key strategy to enhance the overall sustainability performance of products, including strategies to improve the useful life of products and close flows of material in a circular path. In the measurement of circularity, existing sustainability indicators are oriented solely to single products and do not consider the product family approach, which involves the use of a common product platform comprised by constructive components or modules able to generate different product variants to satisfy a variety of customer requirements. Consequently, this paper proposes six indicators regarding material flow, reusability, reconfiguration, and functional performance. Such indicators are focused on measuring the circularity of product families respect the circularity of components among their product variants. A case study based on a family of prosthetic fingers is developed to demonstrate the implementation and usefulness of the proposed set of indicators.

Strategic ramp-up planning in automotive production networks

In many industries, the frequency of production ramp-ups has increased due to shorter product life cycles and increased product variety. Production often takes place at globally dispersed facilities for customers in multiple markets, for example, in the automotive industry. Therefore, ramp-up planning must be carried out for a network. The planning problem at hand is to simultaneously optimise the allocation of products of a common product platform to plants, the timing of ramp-ups and ramp-downs, ramp-up duration and shape of capacity and production and transportation volumes with respect to the net present value of the profit. We develop a hierarchical planning framework and place strategic ramp-up planning therein. We provide a mixed integer programming model for this planning problem. Following the example of a German car manufacturer in the premium segment, we conduct a numerical analysis to obtain insights into optimal ramp-up and ramp-down decisions. The results show that it could be beneficial to use both steep and flat ramp-up curves. The impact of flexibility in the choice of ramp-up slots and the number of ramp-up curves provided on the objective value is substantial. The strategic ramp-up planning model outperforms sequential planning approaches.

Developing price and production postponement strategies of substitutable product

PurposeThis paper aims to focus on duopolistic competition under dynamic price and production postponement for two differentiable products that share common product platform at a certain degree of product commonality.Design/methodology/approachBoth price and production postponement modelling are benchmarked according to their profit in order to investigate the product substitutability effect to the profit and also their appropriateness to different competition situations. In addition, dynamic property is applied to show the demand changes effect of both strategic decisions (price and production) against demand uncertainty.FindingsThe results show that the pure price postponement is appropriate to be applied into highly customized products while pure production postponement to configurable products.Research limitations/implicationsPrice and production postponement decisions help managers to optimize product development as well as production strategy by considering demand and supply sides.Practical implicationsPrice and production postponements give alternative ways to managers for deciding on how to produce products as fighting product and mass customized product.Originality/valueInnovative price and production postponement models are the novelty of this paper.

The effect of risk aversion on product family design under uncertain consumer segments

A product family refers to a group of products that have been derived from a common product platform and which are specifically designed to satisfy a variety of market segments. In this paper, we consider a firm utilising product family design in order to respond to the requirements of two consumer segments, each characterised by different quality valuations. Although the total number of consumers in the market is known, the proportions each segment share are random, with known mean and variance. We show how the uncertainty of the market segmentation affects the firm's decision whether to use common rather than unique components. Motivated by a problem faced by a major automotive manufacturer, we study the consequence of low and high uncertainty, various product quality levels and the difference of marginal valuation on the best configuration.

A Method to Design Common Product Platform Based on Structure Matrix Analysis

Design for product family is an efficient way to guarantee the idea of mass customization to be implemented successfully. This paper presents an approach to architecting a product family that aims to provide methodological guidance for enterprises which plan to implement strategy of product family design. Based on the conventional methodology of designing for a single product, this paper respectively demonstrates the methods of requirement modeling, function-principle modeling and structure modeling in details according to the characteristics of product family design, and also some key approaches in different design processes are presented.

Product platform two-stage quality optimization design based on multiobjective genetic algorithm

Product platform design (PFD) has been recognized as an effective means to satisfy diverse market niches while maintaining the economies of scale and scope. Numerous optimization-based approaches have been proposed to help resolve the tradeoff between platform commonality and the ability to achieve distinct performance targets for each variant. In this study, we propose a two-stage multiobjective optimization-based platform design methodology (TMOPDM) for solving the product family problem using a multiobjective genetic algorithm. In the first stage, the common product platform is identified using a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II); In the second stage, each individual product is designed around the common platform such that the functional requirements of the product are best satisfied. The design of a family of traction machine is used as an example to benchmark the effectiveness of the proposed approach against previous approachs.

Integrated approach to modularize the conceptual product family architecture

To meet the increasingly heterogeneous market, a product family strategy is needed to determine how customized variants can be derived from a common product platform within acceptable cost and time. Toward this, a suitably conceived and developed product family architecture (PFA) is important for implementing mass customization. In this paper, we present a systematic approach to modularize PFA at the early design phase, which is the conceptual design stage. The PFA can be viewed as a conceptual structure with the following three interrelated elements: module, variant, and coupling interface. Identifying variant as the external driver of architectural variation, this paper develops a variety index (VI) method to estimate effects of customization on the conceptual modules. Rather than just identification of module boundary in the product architecture, the proposed modularization method translates the variety source generated from requirements analysis into a dynamic configuration of the conceptual PFA, involving variety analysis, product modularization, and generation of product portfolio architecture. An example of a power tool design is used to demonstrate the proposed method.

Make-to-order, make-to-stock, or delay product differentiation? A common framework for modeling and analysis

Delaying product differentiation is a hybrid strategy that strives to reconcile the dual needs of high variety and quick response time. A common product platform is built to stock in the first stage of production (called the Make-To-Stock (MTS) stage) which is then differentiated into different products after demand is known in the second stage (known as the Make-To-Order (MTO) stage). In this article, we develop models to compute the costs and benefits of delaying differentiation in series production systems when the order lead times are load dependent. The models are then used to gain insights through analytical and numerical comparisons. For example, we observe the following patterns in a large number of numerical experiments. The effect of congestion in the MTS and MTO stages is asymmetric with tighter capacity at the MTO stage having a greater detrimental effect on the desirability of delaying differentiation. If there is flexibility in choosing the point of differentiation, higher loading is observed to favor later differentiation. Also, if the sequence in which work is performed can be affected, then placing workstations that have a tighter capacity in the MTS stage lowers costs.

Introduction of a Product Family Penalty Function Using Physical Programming

In an effort to increase customization for today’s highly competitive global markets, many companies are looking to product families to increase product variety and shorten product lead-times while reducing costs. The key to a successful product family is the common product platform around which the product family is derived. Building on our previous work in product family design, we introduce a product family penalty function (PFPF) in this paper to aid in the selection of common and scaling parameters for families of products derived from scalable product platforms. The implementation of the PFPF utilizes the powerful physical programming paradigm to formulate the problem in terms of physically meaningful parameters. To demonstrate the proposed approach, a family of electric motors is developed and compared against previous results. We find that the PFPF enables us to properly balance commonality and performance within the product family through the judicious selection of the common parameters that constitute the product platform and the scaling parameters used to instantiate the product family.

Balancing Commonality and Performance within the Concurrent Design of Multiple Products in a Product Family

Product family design involves the concurrent design of multiple products based on a common product platform to satisfy a variety of markets. The success of the resulting product family relies heavily on properly balancing the commonality of the product platform with the individual product performance within the product family. To help resolve this tradeoff, we present the Product Variety Tradeoff Evaluation Method for assessing alternative product platform concepts with varying levels of commonality. Two examples are presented to demonstrate the proposed method at both the detailed and the early stages of design. The redesign of a planetary gear transmission for a family of four cordless drills demonstrates the use of the method in the detailed stages of design, while the design of a family of three General Aviation Aircraft demonstrates the use of the method in the preliminary stages of design. The emphasis in this paper is on the effectiveness of the proposed method in evaluating this tradeoff and not on the results of the examples, per se.

A Model-Based Approach for Planning and Developing a Family of Technology-Based Products

In this paper, we address the product-family design problem of a firm in a market in which customers choose products based on some measure of product performance. By developing products as a family, the firm can reduce the cost of developing individual product variants due to the reuse of a common product platform. Such a platform, designed in an aggregate-planning phase that precedes the development of individual product variants, is itself expensive to develop. Hence, its costs must be weighted against the benefits of its reuse in a family. We offer a model for capturing costs of product development when the family consists of variants based on a common platform. It is shown that the model can be converted into a network-optimization problem, and the optimal product-family can be identified under fairly general conditions by determining the shortest path of its network formulation. We also analytically examine the effect of alternative product designs on product-family composition, and discuss the implications of investing in new-product technology. Finally, we illustrate our model and managerial insights with an application from the electronics industry.